Category: Science

Catalytic

I was just reading about a team of scientists who had created a custom biological catalyst system for splitting water to produce hydrogen.

You can read the abstract here (Warning! Science content).

This is also quite interesting given that it comes only a day after I stumbled onto a website that deals with amateur genetic engineering, which I have found myself thinking about quietly ever since. (The idea first entered my consciousness a few years ago after I read a few fictional short stories that were published in the scientific journal Nature, one dealing with a kid who uses a college fund to order DNA sequencing and synthesis services over the internet to recreate extinct species, and another dealing with a group of biotech neo-punks who like genetically modifying themselves at home so that they can do things like grow beards of feathers and the like). I keep on thinking that it would be cool to get back into some degree of biochem research, and the notion of directed protein evolution to create custom enzymes keeps quietly exciting me, but that’s perhaps another story for another time.

Physical activity

I read yesterday about a couple of cool things in the world of physics.

Firstly it appears that they may finally have observational evidence of the presence of dark matter. There is a really good explaination of the results and some of the background of the science here. It also contains links to the academic paper and the NASA press release. Given that this has been such a bone of contention in modern physics it’s nice to see it starting to pan out one way or another.

Secondly, an Irish company (those crazy crazy Irish) believes it has stumbled upon a way of producing “clean” energy from some system involving the interactions of magnetic fields. It’s a superb advance if it can be validated independently, although if that happens it will also confuse the hell out of a lot of people, because superficially at least it appears to violate the first law of thermodynamics (which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can only be converted from one form to another). They have publically advertised for independent physicists to validate their system, and it will be interesting to see what the eventual outcome is.

A series of Scientific Coolnesses

A few weeks back I read about a number of very cool things from the world of science, however it has taken me a little while to get around to writing about them.

Without further ado here they are:

Methanol Powered artificial muscles:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8859&feedId=online-news_rss20

Optic nerve regrowth on a nanofibre scaffold:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8840&feedId=online-news_rss20

Big new reservoir of water ice suspected under Mars:
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn8857&feedId=online-news_rss20

Advances in coagulation:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18925435.800&feedId=online-news_rss20

New insights into the “Spokes” in Saturn’s rings:
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn8860&feedId=online-news_rss20

There. Wasn’t that both varied and fascinating.

They don’t build ’em like they used to

In an amusing story out earlier this week, it turns out that one of the NASA’s Mars Rovers has finally broken (somewhat).

The rovers, each designed to last 6 months, have been going for 2 years, and are still happily trunding around their landing sites doing really good science. The other day however one of the rovers broke a wheel. 1 of the 6 it has. And so with one wheel trailing it’s just continuing to roll around on it’s remaining 5 wheels. Now that’s what I call solid.

For Carl

While I was looking aroud the net for an image of the Voyager plaque I ran across Carl Sagan’s web site. Now Carl is something of a personal hero for me. He was a very famous cosmologist and science communicator, and wrote one of my favorite books Contact, which was eventually turned into a movie starring Jodie Foster. He also stared in and produced the immensely popular international hit science show Cosmos. Unfortunately he died just before the movie was made.

Nifty

Scientific American is reporting that scientists have figured how to use chicken eggs to produce human monoclonal antibodies. Now I could go off on a fantastic tangent about what monoclonal antibodies are, how they work, and so on and so forth.

Suffice it to say however that they are a new type of medicine, and using eggs to make them is cool because it will massively simplify production, and hopefully promote researchers to find more and better uses for them.

Stinky Sleep

This is actually from a while back, but I forgot to mention it at the time. Strange really, since it’s such a cool story.

Turns out scientists have figured out how to basically put mice into suspended animation using nothing but hydrogen sulphide gas. If they can get it to work in humans it would be astonishingly useful, and even if they can’t they’re probably up for a nobel prize for the discovery.